Irons' proclivity to constantly purchase ever more grandiose pieces leads to many of the building's storage rooms being filled with neglected artworks he no longer appreciates.

The latter was designed and installed by the Umbrella Corporation to better facilitate Irons' duties within their clandestine research operations, as these sewer entrances allowed access to their secret underground laboratories.

In the remake, however, the underground lab is accessed through a secret tunnel and office hidden by a large moving statue in the main hall of the RPD, which in the original game would only give you a key to some of the rooms in the station.

During the September 1998 Raccoon City T-Virus outbreak, many of the series' central characters seek refuge within the precinct, including Leon S. Kennedy and Claire Redfield.

Alpha Team operatives Brad Vickers and Jill Valentine holed up in the precinct while being pursued by one of Umbrella's deadly Bio-Organic Weapons, Nemesis, with Vickers being brutally killed by the creature at the precinct entrance (except in the Resident Evil 3 remake, where he's bitten and infected by a zombie before stumbling to the police department to bite and mortally wound officer Marvin Branagh).

The station is temporarily used as a rallying point and temporary shelter for surviving citizens during the incident, including the survivors of Resident Evil Outbreak: File 2.

Accompanying a delay and drastic revision of the game, with the original being referred to as Resident Evil 1.5, Mikami insisted the station's design be changed to that of a historic art museum that resembled a haunted mansion.

The remake retains the station's late 1990s setting, with period-accurate computers, although often other technology from later time periods is used, such as laptops seeming to use wireless streaming for their security footage.

[2] In a PC Gamer feature, journalist Andy Kelly described the station as a "great setting" for multiple reasons, citing its construction around a central hub, helping the player to create a mental map of its layout.

Calling the main hall "far too big", he stated that it left the player feeling "vulnerable, exposed, and daunted", describing it as an unexpected rug-pull after fighting through the zombie outbreak outside.